Collection of One Shot Stories for Bleach
by RaichuTec
Summary: Short short stories, really. Generally Shunsui and Ukitake centric. New story added.
1. His Prodigal Sons

His Prodigal Sons

by Raichutec

He honed their skills, watched them grow from spiritual fledglings into powerful captains, nurtured them, loved them as his own sons. His children. He taught them to follow their hearts. He lectured them on becoming leaders. He smiled quietly to himself as they flourished. They had become his greatest achievement, like the dual zanpakuto they wielded.

Now, they had gone too far. His anger painted another picture, carefully covering over the wound in his chest. He taught them about justice, but never to appeal solely to emotion. He taught them to question authority, but never to so drastically disobey. He trusted their judgments, and found himself sorely disappointed. How could they? Their collective betrayal stung an old man's heart.

There would be no mercy, he could not shield them this time. This was far worse than Shunsui being a little too forward with a girl. Jyuushiro's sense of justice would not placate his ears with honeyed explanations, either. He had spoiled them, he realized. Always letting them get away with such little infractions, no wonder they felt they could pull off something so grand, so completely against everything. If only he had been a little tougher, scolding Jyuushiro when his self righteousness manifested, grinding Shunsui with harder tasks when he slunk away to laze about.

If onlys would not save them now. He now had to decide how to rectify their transgressions. And he knew he had to punish them by his own hand, or take their dishonor with him. But he would take with him their last images. Admire them for what they had become and give them the opportunity to die in battle, honorably, rather than suffer the wrath of Center 46.

He clung to his anger like a drowning man, simply to avoid the urge to weep. They were his children, after all. His beautiful children, who crept out the back door while his back was turned.


	2. Lovebirds

Lovebirds

by Raichutec

Shunsui recalled the first time he ever saw Jyuushiro start coughing. It had been during a particularly grueling semester at the academy. Everyone was stressed by the sheer load of classes with difficult exams coming up. Jyuushiro being the stalwart student that he was had pulled an all nighter trying to prepare himself. Shunsui never understood why his friend pushed himself so hard. He always made good grades and all the teachers loved him. Things came to him so easily, why all the fuss?

He knocked on Jyuushiro's door to rouse him and the face that greeted him seemed so haggard he wondered if he'd woken the wrong student. "Saaa, Jyuushiro-kun, is that really you?"

He didn't even let his friend reply, sweeping into the room with his hands on Jyuushiro's shoulders, directing him right to his bunk. "You didn't sleep last night, I can tell these things. Your exam isn't until this afternoon. We'll nap till then."

"No," Jyuushiro tried to protest, though Shunsui was making it very difficult to resist, "I haven't even finished up with chapter ele--" He paused in mid-sentence, a hand darting over his mouth abruptly. And then he bent over, coughing so violently the force if it made Shunsui's lungs hurt out of sympathy.

Since then, he'd come to accept it as part of who Jyuushiro was. He'd fuss, and then he'd start coughing. People who had never seen it before, or simply weren't accustomed to it, always fretted over him in the most embarassing ways. But Shunsui knew what to do, setting Jyuushiro into the nearest bed, even if it was his own. Warm blankets and tea and a call to the 4th Division when the cough refused to abate.

"I've been dying for centuries," Jyuushiro would sometimes joke, dark humor always hit him when he felt miserable.

"Saaa, don't be silly, you," Shunsui always replied, "You can't die and leave me all by myself. Don't you know what happens to a lovebird when his mate passes away?"

He knew the inevitability of it all the same. And in the cage of his room, he kept a quiet vigil over a sickly Jyuushiro and tried to resist the urge to touch his face for fear of waking him. To memorize the contours of his cheek, his jaw, his forehead with meandering, curious fingers.

Eventually his resolve always fizzled out, but Jyuushiro never woke, either.


	3. A Woman's Hair

"You know, I think red hair is my favorite," Shunsui announced with assurance.

"Hn," Jyuushiro replied absently. Bent partially over a report, he was attempting to read and make sense of it. Shunsui was only visiting, keeping company away from his own Division for a little while. Besides, he liked to claim that the 13th Division had a fine array of very lovely women to look at and he had to come admire them occasionally.

Just as Shunsui made this declaration, one of Jyuushiro's subordinates with firey red hair passed by. She wriggled her fingers as she walked by, smiling at them both. "Hello Ukitake-taichou. Ah... hello to you too, Kyouraku-taichou."

But even at Shunsui's insistence, she didn't linger, moving on like a tide being washed into the streets outside Gotei House 13. He sighed, leaning back in his chair. "Saa, Jyuushiro-kun, your women never have time for me."

Jyuushiro chuckled softly, scribbling something in the margins of the report. "You told me last week you preferred blondes."

"Oh, well... that's true, too. I do like blondes very much. Something about the way the sun catches their hair, especially at sunset." Shunsui sighed contentedly to himself. "But, perhaps I am too quick to speak. Brunettes have just as much appeal. Have you ever seen my lovely Nanao-chan when her hair is down? Ah, how I wish she'd do so more often."

Jyuushiro glanced up, chewing on the end of the pen absently. "Shunsui-kun, that about covers most of the hair colors, the normal ones at least. You told me last month you certainly had a thing for women with exotic colors. Pink or purple or anything imbetween."

Shunsui's final comment brought the pen out of Jyuushiro's mouth and clattering onto the ground. "Well, true as that is, have you ever noticed how utterly captivating a woman is when she's completely bald?" 


End file.
